What animals are similar to humans. What animal is closest to a human? Emotions of man and animals

Like no other, man is inclined to influence the planet. Having fenced off cities from the wild world, we often perceive ourselves as separate from nature. Modern science still believes that people are its product. Having reached our "throne" thanks to evolution, we have retained something in common with our "relatives" of mammals. What makes us like them? What's the difference? We will present a comparison of man and animal later in the article.

Man in the biological system

Modern man belongs to the genus People and the species Homo sapiens (reasonable man). There are different theories about the true origin of such a developed being: the theory of external interference, spatial anomalies, creationism and evolutionism.

According to scientific theory, people appeared by evolution in the same way as other animals on the planet. The closest relative of the genus of people is Australopithecus, and from it, about 2.3 million years ago, the first man appeared - Homo habilis (skillful). Homo sapiens arose only 130-150 thousand years ago.

In biological taxonomy, we refer to the chordate mammals and the order of primates, which explains some of the similarities between humans and animals. Of the species living on Earth, the most similar to humans in DNA are the common and pygmy chimpanzees.

General similarities between humans and animals

People belong to the animal kingdom, which means they have similar features with other representatives of it. So, our organs and tissues consist of cells that are equipped with a cell nucleus and are devoid of vacuoles.

As a representative of the class of mammals, a person has a bilateral body symmetry, four limbs, a clear division of body parts into a head, limbs, torso and neck (in animals, the tail is still prominent). Warm-bloodedness, intrauterine development of embryos, live birth, feeding of young with milk, the presence of hair on the body are inherent in people.

The organ systems of humans and animals (mammals) have common features, which are shown in the table below.

System	Common features
circulatory	Four-chambered heart. Two circles of blood circulation.
Respiratory	Lung breathing. Alveolar lungs. There is a thyroid cartilage and an epiglottis.
exocrine	Milk, sebaceous and sweat glands
Integumentary
Musculoskeletal	Internal skeleton (skull, thorax, spine, limb belts). Five sections of the spine. Cheekbone. Paired tympanic bone. Diaphragm.
digestive	4 parts of the digestive tract (oropharynx, esophagus, stomach, intestines). Developed glands and an elongated tract.
	Central and peripheral NS. Synaptic transmission using neurotransmitters rather than electrical signals.
sense organs	Color vision. vestibular apparatus. Ear shells. Taste buds on the mucous membranes of the tongue and palate. Somatovisceral skin sensitivity.

Embryo development

The similarity of man and animals is observed already in the first stages of life. Human embryos in the early stages practically do not differ from the embryos of other higher vertebrates. Only with time do they begin to acquire specific features for each species. At the same time, homologous organs are formed from the same structures, that is, where the forelimbs appear in lizards, wings develop in birds, and hands in humans, etc.

How are our embryos similar? The development of all vertebrates begins with fertilization, then a zygote is formed, which is crushed, passing into the stages of morula, blastula and gastrula. From the middle (mesoderm), internal (endoderm) and external (ectoderm) germ layers, organs and tissues begin to form.

Like other vertebrates, at 2.5 weeks of life, we have a chord - a long longitudinal strand, which eventually transforms into a spine. The heart at first looks like a tube with pulsating walls, and what later develops into the spinal cord and a full-fledged nervous system is at first a neural tube.

Like fish, the human brain up to 3 months consists of five cerebral vesicles. The umbilical cord connects us with the maternal organism, which is observed in all placental mammals. In primates, rodents and predators, it disappears at the birth of the fetus.

Humans and primates

The similarity between humans and animals is best seen in the great great apes. These are the representatives of mammals closest to us, united with humans in the family of hominids. In many ways, chimpanzees have more in common with humans than with other apes. Once they even wanted to define the Homo group.

The external similarity lies in elongated limbs compared to the body, in broad shoulders, a long neck and ischial calluses. Both of them do not have a tail, and there is no undercoat on the skin, the nose protrudes from the plane of the face, and the fingers have nails instead of claws. The body of great apes (anthropoids) is not covered with hair as densely as that of their counterparts.

Chimpanzee blood also has four blood groups, and the timing of their pregnancy and puberty is almost identical to ours. We have the same patterns on the molars, an equal number of lobes in the lungs and a similar structure of the larynx. Monkeys also have 4 incisors and 4 canines, 8 molars, 5-6 sacral vertebrae in the skeleton. They can walk on their hind limbs, helping themselves with their hands.

Our Common Diseases

The similarity of the internal structure of people and animals leads to the fact that we can be overcome by the same viruses and infections. Since monkeys are closest to us in terms of DNA structure, they are most susceptible to our diseases. They easily become infected from us with tuberculosis, influenza, cholera, smallpox, and hepatitis.

All mammals are susceptible to prion diseases. Humans and animals alike are susceptible to rabies. There are many cases in history when rats transmitted plague and leptospirosis to humans.

From pets, a person can become infected with helminths, ringworm, cat scratch fever, toxoplasmosis. Birds and reptiles carry salmonellosis and ornithosis, rodents - tularemia. Both wild and domestic animals are susceptible to anthrax and fascioliasis.

Our differences

While similar in many ways, humans differ from other species in many ways. Many physical differences between man and animals are associated with the development of our upright posture and speech. So, we have a more developed brain section than the front one, we have a chin, the pelvis is expanded.

Great apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes, while humans have 23. The spine of monkeys has an arcuate bend, while ours is S-shaped. Our legs bear the weight of the entire body, so they have stronger muscles. Human feet are arched to soften the concussion of the organs when walking. The chest is flat but broad.

Separating us from most mammals is trichromatic vision (also found in primates) and a weaker sense of smell. Only 387 genes are responsible for determining odors in us, in primates - 500, in macrosomates - more than 1000.

Our legs are longer than our arms, while primates have the opposite. The fangs do not protrude from the dentition, the body is shorter than in monkeys. The thumb of a person is opposed to the rest and is very mobile, this helps to use various tools.

Brain and intellect

Of course, the main difference between man and animals is intelligence. Mammals have advanced furthest in their mental abilities. However, they are not able to surpass us. Man has consciousness, concrete and abstract thinking. We can generalize, dream, reflect on the past and the future.

A person is capable of long-range planning, while animals make decisions only for the next time period. Humans are the only species capable of drawing conclusions, learning about the world around them, and passing on their knowledge to others.

In this regard, our brain has acquired features that are different from animals. Its bark is 2.5 times larger in area than that of monkeys. It is larger, and the furrows are more developed. The parietal, frontal and temporal lobes, which are responsible for speech and the psyche, are also more developed in us.

A person is capable of speech, while animals have only a simplified signal system. They can notify their “brothers” of the simplest situations, for example, “danger!”, “Pleasure”, etc. Yellow-bellied marmots have 8 such signals, macaques have about 30.

But animals are capable of learning. Chimpanzees are more advanced in this. The owners of the Washoe chimpanzee managed to teach sign language. As a result, she mastered 500 concepts and could even combine them to create her own. For example, with the words "water" + "bird" she explained that she saw a swan.

Behavior

The difference in intelligence also affects the differences in the behavior of humans and animals. Both those and others are characterized by conditioned and unconditioned reflexes. But in general, the actions of animals are more ritualized and dictated by ancient instincts, and a person is inclined to act according to the situation, taking into account all external factors and his own desire. In other words, of all animals, we tend to behave in the most plastic way.

An instinct is a form of behavior that is inherent in a species at the genetic level, it is dictated by biological needs and includes a strictly defined procedure. If at least one condition is changed, then the animal will be confused or react not quite adequately.

For example, wasps, before dragging caught prey into a hole, leave it at the entrance, and climb inside themselves to check if someone else has run into it. When everything is in order, they drag the victim to the "house". If we intervene and move her prey a little further from the entrance, the wasp will start repeating all over again. Its behavior does not include the possibility that someone will drag food, so the wasp will again transfer the victim to the entrance and climb into the hole again to check.

Emotions of man and animals

In both us and animals, primary emotions are innate. From this we can conclude that the feelings associated with them of man and animals are felt in the same way, and some even manifest themselves like ours. Primates have the same set of facial muscles and can also show grimaces of joy, anger, fear, etc.

A vivid expression of emotions is inherent in social animals, as it performs a communicative function. One of the important manifestations of emotions is the grin. An open mouth with protruding fangs warns the enemy of a warlike mood like nothing better.

But in animals, emotions are purely biological in nature and exist only within the limits of their direct needs and instincts. The danger for them exists only at the specific moment of the attack, and the feeling of fear appears only then. In a person, it can occur even in a calm environment, if he imagines a dangerous situation.

Culture and creativity

If instincts and emotions are observed in all higher animals, then culture is what defines a person. Humans are the only organisms that not only exist in the environment, but can also change it.

Through thinking, creative activity and knowledge, we create material objects and spiritual values. Of the entire animal kingdom, only man is able to create tools with the help of other tools. This is how we invented clothes, household items, weapons, built pyramids, palaces, cities.

Some animals can also use tools. For example, crows get worms and insects from the bark of a tree using sticks and twigs. But they cannot make this stick themselves.

Not certainly in that way! This statement was relevant even several decades ago. Then it was believed that the closest relative of man is anthropoid. This was confirmed by the so-called scale of ingenuity among animals. According to this scale, great apes were the closest. However, a number of experiments and experiments carried out at the present time, all move away from close relationship with man.

According to the theory of evolution, Homo sapiens is an underdeveloped ape that has one less chromosome than, for example, a chimpanzee, but has a similar structure of the skull and forelimbs. At present, Charles Darwin's theory of the origin of man from apes does not find its confirmation, which allows the world's scientific minds to look for more and more new "relatives" of man.

Human resemblance to a dolphin

Researchers who studied the brain found that the encephalogram of bottlenose dolphins brings them closer to humans. The fact is that the brain of this species of dolphins is as similar as possible to the human one. The gray matter in these animals is slightly larger than in humans, and also contains more convolutions. According to the research of the Swiss professor A. Portman, the mental features of the dolphin took an honorable second place after the man (the third place among elephants, and the fourth place among monkeys).

What unites a person with pigs?

The anatomical structure of pigs allows us to call them the closest relatives of humans. The fact is that the embryo of this mammalian animal has a bookmark of a five-fingered limb and a muzzle that is very reminiscent of a human face. Piglet on a pig's muzzle and hooves on legs develop immediately before childbirth. In addition, already born pigs have the maximum physiology with humans. That is why pig organs (liver, kidneys, heart, spleen) are used in surgery for human transplantation.

Similarities between humans and rats

These rodents also amazingly copy a person at the anatomical level, but not as much as pigs. Rats have the same blood composition and tissue structure as humans. Curiously, these rodents are the only animals in the world that (like humans) have abstract thinking. Rats can make simple inferences, which allows them to be so tenacious. In addition, if a rat is enlarged to human size, and then the skeleton is straightened, one can see that the joints of humans and rats have the same anatomical structure, and the bones have an equal number of fragments.

Enough has been accumulated in science a large number of facts showing striking resemblance between humans and animals, which allows us to conclude about the unity of the origin of living beings. The following facts confirm the relationship between humans and animals.

1) In human and animal cells contain the same proteins nucleic acids that perform the same functions. A particularly great similarity was found between humans and monkeys: for example, in DNA humans and chimpanzees are kept 92% similar genes. The immunological properties of blood are also similar: both in humans and in great apes they differ blood groups and there is Rh factor.

2) In the structure of the body of humans and animals allocate similar bodies And body parts . Like all monkeys, the human forelimbs are prehensile, have a hand that can freely bend and unbend; the thumb is opposed to the rest; terminal phalanges are equipped with arched nails. The clavicles are well developed in the shoulder girdle, providing varied and complex movements of the forelimbs. The skull is large. The eye sockets are located on the front side of the skull and face forward. The fields of view of each eye are not isolated, as in most mammals, but overlap one another, which provides binocular, three-dimensional vision. In addition, a person has vestigial organs , which performed important functions in animals and were preserved in humans, although they are not needed by him (for example, the appendix).

3) Man and primates, unlike other mammals, have highly developed brain having occipital lobe And prominent frontal lobes. The presence of the occipital lobes is associated with the development of vision, and the frontal - with intellectual abilities. The whole complex - forelimbs capable of manipulation, highly developed organs of vision and the brain of monkeys - is a fundamental prerequisite for the ability to work.

4) Embryo development animals of the same type are similar in many respects. Everyone has chordates in the early stages embryogenesis the axial skeleton (chord) is laid, the neural tube appears, gill slits are formed. The structure of the heart of the human embryo resembles the structure of the heart of fish - one atrium and one ventricle. The study of the embryonic development of various animals led to the conclusion that man in his embryonic development goes through all stages of the evolution of the species. This feature was formulated in the second half of the XIX century. German scientists F. Müller and E. Haeckel how biogenetic law - « in ontogeny repeats phylogenesis ”, according to which the individual development of an individual (ontogeny) is a brief repetition of phylogeny (the historical development of a species).

5) Behaviors humans and animals are similar in many ways. Animals, like humans, have developed a system of communication with the help of appropriate signals. The mechanisms of human behavior as a biological species and animals are the same. Outstanding Russian scientists I.M. Sechenov (1863) and I.P. Pavlov (1926) created reflex theory of behavior , based on complex and diverse manifestations of the activity of the nervous system, the functional unit of which is reflex.

However, in building And physiology human there are significant differences from animals. bipedalism became possible due to the strong development of the muscles of the lower extremities, the appearance of pronounced bends in the spine (cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacrococcygeal), changes in the position of the pelvis (at an angle of 60º to the horizontal), the formation of an arched foot with a well-developed first toe. In accordance with the vertical position of the body, the location of the internal organs also changed.

It should be noted functional division of the upper and lower extremities of a person. The human hand is characterized by a high degree of development - the movable hand is flexible, it has a large number of small muscles, the thumb is opposed to the palm, which allows you to firmly hold objects. The human hand is non-specific, it can perform a variety of complex and subtle movements.

The main difference in the structure of man and animal is brain development - material basis of thinking, consciousness, speech. Head brain person is not only significant larger but also much more complex structure than the brains of animals. This is due to the emergence of new structures, ensembles of neurons that regulate complex movements, speech, and thinking. hemispheresbrain human unequal, they functionally asymmetrical . Scientists have proven that lefthemisphere connected with logical thinking, purposeful action, but right- from emotional sphere, from intuition. The asymmetry of the human brain is formed immediately after birth.

To morphofunctional features human body can also be attributed mainly developed brain region of the skull compared with facial, large brain volume, binocular vision, hairless skin, low fertility and others.

The evolution of steel fundamental biosocial differences of a person that appear in the process of ontogenesis under the condition of a person's life among people, in society. These features relate to the physiology, and behavior, and lifestyle of a person.

The development of the mind.Human unlike animals has special form of thinking conceptual thinking, i.e., the ability to form abstract, abstract ideas about subjects in which the basic properties of specific things are generalized. Reflection of reality animals always specifically, subject associated with certain objects in the environment.

Animals maycommit very difficult steps, but their behavior is based on instincts - genetically incorporated programs of behavior. The set of such actions is strictly limited, a sequence is defined that does not change with changing conditions. A person first sets a goal, draws up an action plan that can change if necessary, and puts it into practice, analyzes the results, draws conclusions. Human conscious what he does and understands the world.

The most human-like animal is the great ape. She not only has a skeletal structure similar to that of a human, but also a thumb set aside, with which she can touch the tips of other fingers, which allows the monkey to grab various objects with her hands and climb trees. A person's thumb makes it possible to use tools. These monkeys also lack a tail. Their brains are larger and more complex in structure than those of marmosets, for example.

Some people think that monkeys are the ancestors of humans, but this is not true. The theory of evolution says that ape and man many years ago descended from one common ancestor, but developed along different branches.

There are four types of anthropoids, or great apes. The largest and strongest is the gorilla. The next largest is the orangutan, then the chimpanzee, and finally the smallest of all, the gibbon.

Gibbon is the least studied representative of great apes, but it is he who has the greatest resemblance to humans. The Gibbon can stand upright and walk like a human, rather than hobble around on its forelimbs. But, on the other hand, the gibbon walks little on the ground and spends most of its life on trees, moving from branch to branch with the help of long arms and descending only to pick up leaves or fruits lying on the ground.

It is interesting to note that the teeth of great apes are similar to ours. While eating, the gibbon sits upright, like a person, and its diet, in addition to the main food in the form of leaves and fruits, can include spiders, birds, and eggs. The gibbon has a very strong family. Parents and children are not separated day or night, and since a young gibbon lives with parents until about 6 years old, the gibbon family can have 8-9 members. In the wild jungle, the gibbon can live to a very old age - up to 30 years!

Everything about everything. Volume 3 Likum Arkady

Which animal is most similar to a human?

The most human-like animal is the great ape. She not only has a skeletal structure similar to that of a human, but also a thumb set aside, with which she can touch the tips of other fingers, which allows the monkey to grab various objects with her hands and climb trees. A person's thumb makes it possible to use tools. Some people think that monkeys are the ancestors of humans, but this is not true.

The theory of evolution says that ape and man many years ago descended from one common ancestor, but developed along different branches. There are four types of anthropoids, or great apes. The largest and strongest is the gorilla.

The next largest is the orangutan, then the chimpanzee, and finally the smallest of all, the gibbon. Gibbon is the least studied representative of great apes, but it is he who has the greatest resemblance to humans. The Gibbon can stand upright and walk like a human, rather than hobble around on its forelimbs.

But, on the other hand, the gibbon walks little on the ground and spends most of its life on trees, moving from branch to branch with the help of long arms and descending only to pick up leaves or fruits lying on the ground. And while eating, the gibbon sits upright, like a person, and its diet can include spiders, birds, and eggs.

The gibbon has a very strong family. Parents and children are not separated day or night, and since a young gibbon lives with parents until about 6 years old, the gibbon family can have 8–9 members. In the wild jungle, a gibbon can live to a very advanced age - 30 years old!

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